The waiting was over, which was its own kind of relief. For a day and a half the cube had just sat there in the dark being enormous and quiet, and quiet was somehow worse than hostile, because quiet gave a person time to think about all the ways this could go. Now the Dutchman was moving, sliding out of the last of the nebula's cover on a hard approach vector, and the cube had stopped being a problem to think about and started being a problem to solve. Zedd stood at the center of the bridge and watched it grow in the viewport, closer with every second, its scarred surface resolving into detail he could have done without. "Here we go," he said, to no one and everyone. "Lindsy, fly it like you promised me you could. Mei-Lin, you're my eyes on that hull, anything wakes up out there I want to hear about it before it finishes waking."

"On the approach now." Lindsy's hands were already moving, the vector she'd spent half the night refining unspooling across her console in branching lines. She didn't look up, didn't need to, her whole attention narrowed to the narrow lane of space between the ship and the gaps in the cube's defensive grid. "The grid's got holes in it, same as the scans showed. They open and close on a rhythm I think I've got read, so trust me when I move even if it looks wrong, because I'm flying the gap that's about to be there, not the one you can see." Beside her Mei-Lin had her console lit up in a wall of sensor returns, her jaw tight, watching the hull for the first flicker of the thing none of them wanted to see. "Power's still low," she said, not quite reassured by her own reading. "Still crippled, still mostly dark. But there's fluctuation in it now that wasn't there yesterday, little surges, deep in. I don't love it. Something in that thing is stirring, even if it doesn't know we're here yet."

“Morgan to bridge. I’ve been monitoring the energy signatures since we got in range. Power readings are negligible with little or no subspace transmissions. I’m hoping it’s more than a tech malfunction on the cube; maybe a system wide failure. I’ll be on the alert and on standby when you’re ready to board.”

"Thank you Avery, we'll send you the signal when the time comes. Just in case, make sure we have power to divert as needed, I don't trust anything with this cube."

“Understood. All backups and auxiliaries are available when we need them. Plenty of areas
from which to bleed power should the need arise. Morgan out.”

As the comm link closed, Zedd took a look around the bridge real quick to gauge everyone at their station and get a sense of the overall feeling.

Ragnar stood towards the back of the bridge, already dressed for the away mission with his tactical vest on under his coat, and a phaser rifle secured across his back. The rest of the weapons and equipment were waiting by the airlock, divided up and ready to take with them once they had somewhere to board. He had checked everything more than once during the wait, although there had not been much else to do besides watch the cube and wonder how long it was going to stay quiet.

Lindsy continued to navigate on course, she looked tense but that was to be expected. There was a lot riding on this, and if something happened, they'd be in trouble.

Mei-Lin piped up next "Captain, we're being scanned, it appears to be spectral. It's coming from the cube..."

Zedd looked back over at the figure manning weapons "Status of shields and weapons?"

"Shields are up and at maximum, weapons are ready." Rallid replied. With Rhiana seeing to the last of the preparations for the away team, Rallid had been asked to take over the tactical station on the bridge. He was comfortable doing so, though this entire operation was a fool's errand in his opinion. His turned his head just briefly to check on Tiraa, but returned his attention to his station immediately after.

A scan. That certainly didn't bode well. Tiraa sat in her seat by Zedd's side and was the picture of calm. Her long legs were crossed and her hands rested atop her knees. The very air seemed a hum of general anxiety, but who wasn't anxious when it came to a possible confrontation with the Borg. The scan indicated there was more life over there than they had anticipated, however, and Tiraa frowned deeply; she wasn't about to die here for money she didn't need.

"Break the scan now." Zedd's ordered, his voice went flat fast. "I don't care how, just don't let that thing finish reading us. Lindsy, get us off this vector."

"Already moving." Lindsy rolled the Dutchman off her nearly perfect clean approach and threw her onto a hard new vector, the stars wheeling across the viewport, and the spectral scan slid off the hull and had to start over from nothing. It bought them seconds. Out here, seconds were the whole game. "That'll cost us time on the approach, but it beats letting it map our harmonics. It'll likely re acquire, though. I can keep shaking it but I can't shake it forever, not and still close the distance."

The cube answered before anyone had a chance to decide anything next. Deep in the cube's scarred flank, a part that had been dark since they found it dragged itself half-alive, and a lance of green fire shat out across the gap between them, slow, ragged, badly aimed, and still enough to punch a starship into scrap if it connected. It went wide. The next one would not.

"Incoming fire, brace for impact." Lindsy did not wait for the order. She stood the Dutchman on her side and the beam went past close enough that the hull sang with it, and then she was already rolling back onto the approach, stealing back every meter of distance she'd given up. "That was a ranging shot. I need to close before it does, because the closer we get the worse their firing angle gets, and if I can get us in under its arc. Get inside its reach and stay there."

"Then close in." Zedd ordered, gripping the back of her chair, eyes on the cube filling the viewport. "Mei-Lin, talk to me. What's it doing?"

"She's waking up, in pieces." Mei-Lin's console was a wall of returns and none of them were good. "Power's climbing in isolated sections, not ship-wide, it can't bring the whole grid up, but it doesn't need the whole grid. It's routing everything it's got to the weapons that still work. I'm reading two more arrays coming online, port-dorsal and one low on the ventral face. And, Captain, the shield harmonics, it did finish part of that scan before Lindsy broke it. It's got a piece of us. Expect the next hits to land closer."

“Morgan to bridge. I’m reading the same energy spikes that you probably see. Good news for us, they can’t get full power. It’s as if their subroutines are corrupted. They can’t adapt as they normally would. Use it to your advantage, Zedd. Shields are holding at 98 percent.”

Zedd gave a nod in response, more out of habit than to anyone in particular. "Thank you Morgan, that's good to hear. Keep an eye on shields and let me know of any changes."

The next shot landed. The ventral port fired and Lindsy almost slipped it but almost was not all the way, and the beam caught them with a glancing blow across the underside of the ship, the deck lurching hard enough to put people into their consoles. Alarms lit the bridge in red. Somewhere below, something ruptured in response.